Political Dynamics of Passing Trafficking Legislation

"For those of you who think that human trafficking is something that happens in big cities…the sad news that I’m here to report is that it’s also going on in our backyards. So the time is now, the time is right, for this [legislative] body to take the action this morning to strengthen those laws."
Quote from Rep. Sannie Overly, introducing HB 3 on the floor of the Kentucky House of Representatives, March 5th 2013

Every state experiences political dynamics in attempting to pass human trafficking legislation. My research has shown that the story of Kentucky's HB 3 is quite interesting.

In 2013 state legislators in Kentucky were feeling significant pressure to pass CSEC legislation. The legislature had previously failed to pass HB 350, prior human trafficking legislation introduced in the Kentucky General Assembly, in the previous year's session. In 2012, HB 350 passed the House, but stalled in the Senate in the final weeks of the 2012 session. In the final hours of session, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill, but did not meet the reading requirements to bring the bill to the floor for final passage. The Senate President called it an “oversight” and argued that failure to pass the bill did not “indicate any lack of Senate support for wanting to deal with the problem.”

Despite the Senate President’s words at the end of session, Kentucky stakeholders who supported the trafficking legislation believed the legislation failed in 2012 because of a lack of buy-in from the state legislature. The 2012 session was a budget year (the Kentucky General Assembly passes a two-year budget every other year), and bills have a history of failing in the last hours of the session because many are held until the budget passes, at which point the General Assembly has too little time to vote on legislation before it must adjourn for the year.

Given the failure of HB 350, human trafficking advocates decided to convene a group of policymakers (including other legislators) over the summer of 2012 to plan for the following session. The legislature also decided to form another state policy group in the summer of 2012: the Unified Juvenile Code Task Force. The Unified Juvenile Code Task Force had identified a primary issue for their work: status offenders (particularly runaways and truant youth) who were being incarcerated in juvenile detention. The fact that status offenders were being held in detention in Kentucky was a huge media issue and a symbol of how Kentucky was “falling behind” the rest of the country in its responses to children in trouble. In addition, the Rescue and Restore task force identified that a large proportion of trafficking victims in Kentucky. More than 100 trafficking victims had been identified since 2008, and more than half of them were children. Because of the specific issues related to the trafficking population in Kentucky, and the political focus on status offenders, the human trafficking policy group decided to focus the 2013 trafficking legislation on child trafficking victims in Kentucky.

The product of this human trafficking policy group was HB 3. HB 3 was introduced in the 2013 legislative session with more than 80 co-sponsors. In March 2013, it unanimously passed the General Assembly and the following week it was signed by the Governor.

As I begin to formulate policy recommendations, I am considering the political implications of each of them - particularly those that would require legislative changes.

Gender Disparities in CSEC Cases

Before I talk about more of my research findings, enjoy photos of this gorgeous sunset above the Rupp Arena in Lexington!

Another key area of my research this summer has been identifying gender disparities in CSEC cases. In Kentucky, 90 percent of the 125 trafficking cases that DCBS has investigated involve girls, and 10 percent (13 cases) involve boys. However, service providers who work on trafficking issues in Kentucky are aware of many more incidents with boys who are involved in the sex trade, either because they are trading sex for food or shelter, or they have an exploiter or pimp. Two questions follow from this: 1) why have so few trafficking incidents involving boys initiated trafficking referrals to DCBS, and 2) if the referrals have been made to DCBS, has DCBS not classified the referral as a trafficking case?

Local police departments, the state police, court-designated workers, and DJJ staff refer the majority of trafficking cases to DCBS. Stakeholders speculate that particularly in the law enforcement community, officials may not see boys as CSEC victims in the same way that they see girls as CSEC victims. For a girl, low-level criminal activity may initiate a trafficking investigation, but for a boy, low-level criminal activity may initiate criminal charges. These different responses would make it difficult to identify all of the trafficking victims in Kentucky, and determine whether the state has systems in place to meet the needs of all CSEC youth.

There are a number of other reasons why boy CSEC victims may not be identified. In Kentucky, many of the services that exist for CSEC youth are designed primarily for girls. Many of these services were built from existing sexual assault and domestic violence community programs, and these organizations work primarily with female victims. This is similar to the situation in other states; for example, recent research on LGBTQ youth and young men who have sex with men (YMSM) who are engaged in survival sex in New York City suggests that there are limited (if any) services or resources that are specialized for boys and transgender youth who have been sexually exploited or are involved in the commercial sex market. Given that this research was done in New York City, which has treatment and victim support services specifically designed for boys and transgender youth, the problem may be more significant in states like Kentucky with a less robust provider network to serve these youth.

These questions relate to the larger question of whether there are adequate services and placement options for CSEC victims in Kentucky. The policy recommendations I am developing will focus on building the capacity to serve these youth, and identifying resources to fund new programs.

Storms! And Conference Updates...

This time of year, storms in Kentucky are particularly bad...this was not so fun to fly through!

But the research has been great! In June, I met with Kentucky stakeholders as they attended the Court Improvement Conference, where the focus this year was human trafficking. The meetings were very fruitful for Kentucky, where the group determined that a primary focus in the coming year should be developing a universal screening and assessment tool for child trafficking.

Another June conference in Kentucky - the Behavior Institute - also included a presentation on youth in juvenile detention who had experiences with human trafficking and sexual exploitation. This researcher uncovered some interesting gender dynamics with human trafficking, which I will focus subsequent posts on. I will also shift towards focusing on policy recommendations and conclusions from my research.